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Can Order come from Chaos?

I'd like to do a thought experiment with everyone who would participate. This is just simple imagination.

Here is the basis of the this experiment.

Imagine you have twenty-six small pieces of paper with one letter from the English alphabet on each side of each piece. Now throw these imaginary pieces into the air and wait for them to land. See how many English words you can find in the jumble. If you find none, gather them up and throw them again. Eventually you will find a word and if this process is repeated enough times you will find, inevitably, every word in the English language.

Now let us remove the English alphabet from the equation and say the letters are just symbols with no other attribute then their shape. Then the only meanings we can infer from the jumble will be proper names such as Robert, Moscow or Excalibur. No matter how many times the paper is cast we can never infer a word from the mess.

Next we can remove the letters from the paper pieces and throw them again. Now the only meanings we can infer are shapes of objects we've seen in the world, the paper mess has become a pictograph.

Finally, let's remove the final aspect of order from this system, us. Without intelligence or order what can the chaotic paper mess ever become?

You wouldn't get every word in the English language. Some words use the same letters more than once.

What is the meaning of this experiment. We all know if you get a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years you may produce a great work of literature. If this is some lame creationist take one evolution please say and we can prove you wrong.

Finally, let's remove the final aspect of order from this system, uc. Without intelligence or order what can the chaotic paper mess ever become?

Please, weigh in. Give your two cents or more if you like.

Edit: spelling

Hi there!

As I am most certianly the least quailified person in these forums to answer this question, my answer is probably meaningless. However, when you posed that question, the first thing that came to mind was:

patterns.

*shrug*

I am looking forward to the replies. I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at but I'd like to hear the answers too.

Judge: god, you have been accused of existence! What do you have to say for yourself?

He's trying to show that the second law of thermodynamics disproves evolution. He's referring to something known as a free energy loss. If I start with 100 pieces of paper each with one letter intricatly arranged and toss them into the air they will almost certainly not reconstitute themselves. If I burn the paper, the ashes and oxygen will never reconstitute themselves. Water does not flow uphill.

Things always progress to the lowest free energy state.

Yet for life to exist, to grow, and to evolve requires it to seemingly break this iron law. I will now demonstrate why this is false.

At any rate, we need to understand some basic concepts first. These are The laws of thermodynamics, entropy, enthalpy and free energy.

Let us imagine a box, a system closed off from the universe, with a cell inside it. The cell in a box is a closed system with a fixed amount of free energy. This system will have a total amount of Energy denoted E. Let us suppose the reaction A to B occurs in the box and releases a great deal of chemical bond energy as heat. This energy will increase the rate of molecular motions (transitional, vibrational and rotational) in the system. In other words it will raise the temperature.

However, the energy for these motions will soon transfer out of the system as the molecular motions heat up the wall of the box and then the outside world, which is denoted sea. Eventually, the cell in a box system returns to it’s initial temperature, and all the chemical bond energy released has been transferred to the surroundings. According to the first law of thermodynamics, the change in energy in the box (denoted ∆Ebox or just ∆E) must be equal and opposite to the amount of heat energy transferred out, denoted as h. Therefore ∆E=-h.

E in the box can also change during a reaction due to work done in the outside world. Suppose there is a small volume increase in the box (∆V) which must decrease the energy in the box (∆E) by the same amount. In most reactions, chemical bond energy is converted to work and heat. Enthalpy(H)is a composite function of work and heat, (H=E+PV). Technically it is the Enthalpy change (∆H) is equal to the heat transferred to the outside world during a reaction.

Reactions with a -∆H are exothermic, and ones with +∆H are endothermic. Therefore –h=∆H. The volume change in reactions is so negligible that this is a good approximation.

-h≈∆H≈∆E

The Second Law of Thermodynamics allows us to predict the course of a reaction.

Let us consider 1000 coins in a box, all facing heads. It is a closed system, which, by definition, does not exchange energy input or output with the rest of the universe. States of high order have low probability. For instance, if we imagine a box with 1000 coins lying heads up, and we shake it twice, it is vastly more probable that we will end up with a chaotic arrangement of coins than the arrangement that we had previously. Thus, the law can be restated closed systems tend to progress from states of low probability to high probability. This movement towards high probability in a system where the energy is E, is progressive. In order for the entropy (the progression towards high probability) to be corrected, there must be periodic bursts of energy input, which would break the closed nature of the system. In this case, it would require someone to open the box and rearrange the coins.

Therefore, for a living organism to maintain order and increase order, there must be a useful energy input. For that to happen, there will be a useless energy output. Thus increasing the order in the cell will increase the disorder of the entire universe. In this way, we can imagine life forms and other complexities as islands of order in a universe progressing towards disorder. For this to happen, there must be a colossal influx of free energy all the time. This is one the requisites for life. As luck would have it, we have such a system: The sun.

We need a quantitative unit to measure this, and to measure the degree of disorder or probability for a given state (recall the coins in a box analogy). This function is entropy (denoted S) The change in entropy that occurs when the reaction A to B converts one mole A to one mole B is

∆S= R log PB/PA

PA and PB are probabilities of states A and B. R is the gas constant (2 cal/deg-1/mole-1) ∆S is measured in entropy units (eu).

In an example with a box containing one thousand coins all facing heads, the initials state (all coins facing heads) probability is 1. The state probability after the box is shaken vigorously is about 10^298. Therefore, the entropy change when the box is shaken is R log 10^298 is about 1370eu per mole of each container (6.02x10^23 containers). ∆S is positive in this example. It is reactions with a large positive ∆S which are favorable and occur spontaneously. We say these reactions increase the entropy in the universe.

Heat energy causes random molecular commotion, the transfer of heat from the cell in a box to the outside increases the number of arrangements the molecules could have, therefore increasing the entropy (analogous to the 1000 coins a box).The release of X amount of heat energy has a greater disordering effect at low temp. than at high temp. therefore the value of ∆S for the surroundings of the cell in a box denoted ∆Ssea is equal to the amount of heat transferred divided by absolute temperature or

∆Ssea =h/T

We must now look at a critical concept: Gibbs Free Energy (G)

When observing enclosed bio-systems, we need to know whether or not a given reaction can occur spontaneously. The question regarding this is whether the ∆S for the universe is positive or negative for the reaction, as already discussed.

In the cell in a box system there are two separate components to the entropy change in the universe. The ∆S for the inside of the box and the ∆S for the surrounding sea. These must be added together.

For example, it is possible for an endothermic reaction to absorb heat therefore decreasing the entropy of the universe (-∆Ssea) but at the same time cause such a large disorder in the box (+∆Sbox) that the total ∆S is greater than zero. Note that ∆Suniverse=∆Ssea+∆Sbox. 13

For every reaction, ∆Suniverse must be >0. We have just encountered another way to restate the Second Law of Thermodynamics

In this case, the reaction can spontaneously occur even though the sea gives heat to the box during the reaction. An example of this is a beaker of water (the box) in which sodium chloride is dissolving. This is spontaneous even though the temp of the water drops as it is occurring.

The most useful composite function is Gibbs Free Energy (G) which allows one to deduce ∆S in the universe due to the reaction in the box. The formula is: G=H-TS.

For a box of volume V, H is the Enthalpy (E+PV), T is the absolute temperature and S is the entropy. All of these apply to the inside of the box only. The change in free energy in the box during a reaction is given as the ∆G of the products minus the ∆G of the reactants. It is a direct measure of the disorder created in the universe when a reaction occurs. At a constant temp, ∆G= ∆H+T∆S. ∆H is the same as –h, the heat absorbed from the sea. Therefore

-∆G= -∆H +T∆S or -∆G=h+T∆S Therefore -∆G/T=h/t+∆S

h/T still equals ∆Ssea but the ∆S in the above equation is for the box. Therefore.

-∆G= ∆Ssea +∆Sbox =∆Suniverse

A reaction will spontaneously proceed in the direction where ∆G<0, because it means that the ∆S will be >0. They are inverse functions of each other. For a complex set of coupled reactions involving many molecules, one can calculate ∆G by adding the ∆G of all the different types of molecules involved before the reaction, and comparing that to the ∆G of all the molecules produced by the end of the reaction. For example, comparing the ∆G of the passage of a single proton through the inner mitochondrial membrane across the electrochemical proton gradient to the ∆G for ATP hydrolysis, we can conclude that ATP synthase requires the passage of more than one proton for each molecule of ATP synthesized.

Let’s review:

2nd Law: Basically an expression dictating that the whole universe progresses towards disorder, and any reaction must contribute to that disorder. Disorder is energetically favorable and probability-wise favorable.

Heat Energy: The energy in the random motion and hubbub of molecular jostling and movement. This is basically a measure of temperature, but all reactions give off heat energy, which is irretrievable (another way to restate the second law). Heat energy is denoted h.

Enthalpy: A composite function of heat and work, but since ∆V is always next to nothing, we can regard it as the inverse of heat. Enthalpy is a measure of heat energy lost or ∆H=-h

Gibbs Free Energ

The total ∆G for a reaction measures how far from equilibrium the reaction is. The large negative ∆G for ATP hydrolysis means that the cell keeps it very far from equilibrium. Equilibrium is reached when the forward and backward rates of each reaction are precisely equal and the ∆G is zero. For ATP hydrolysis, this occurs when the vast majority of ATP has been hydrolyzed (because ATP hydrolysis is much more favorable than ATP synthesis), like in a dead cell.

What we can conclude is that every reaction must have a negative ∆G to occur.

These seemingly impossible reactions make use of a key concept covered earlier. Let us return to our cell in the sea scenario. Except the cell is not in the box, it is in the sea, receiving free energy from the sun.

Recall: ∆Ssea +∆Sbox =∆Suniverse

Except now it becomes: ∆Ssea +∆Scell =∆Suniverse

For an unfavorable reaction to occur, it must be coupled to a favorable reaction of higher magnitude. IN this way, even the order in the cell increases, the disorder in the sea increases by a greater amount therefore the ∆S is still positive and the ∆G is still negative, leaving the laws of thermodynamics intact.

There are a vast number of examples to choose from. Let us consider a typical unfavorable condensation reaction

A-H+ B-OH = A-B + H20

This reaction will not occur spontaneously. It cannot. It will create free energy of its own accord. That’s impossible. Fortunately there is a mechanism to bypass this.

A favorable reaction is coupled to it. ATP Hydrolysis is a favorable and readily occurring reaction where ATP splits one phosphanhydride to ADP, leaving a very reactive inorganic phosphate. This bond, because it is highly reactive, readily bonds with B-OH forming B-O-PO3.

This is called a high-energy intermediate. Because the bond is so high-energy, it will immediately react with B-H producing A-B + H2O + Pi + ADP

This concept exists in a huge number of reactions. Many reactions involve critical stepwise passing of high energy intermediate chains.

The cells must maintain order by maintaining a constant stream of biochemical catabolism and anabolism being driven by enzymes which lower the activation energy. Food is broken down from macromolecular giant biological polymers like polysaccharides, polypeptides, proteins and giant fatty acids by oxidation, electron carrying, and catalysis of favorable reactions into simple molecules like glucose, amino acids and glycerol. Some of this is in turn, catabolized to break the phosphate bonds which release heat energy to power the cell (and increase entropy in the universe). The rest of it is used to be anabolized again into giant structures in glycogen or lipid storage for later consumption or construction into cellular structures like ribosomes. All of these highly intricate metabolic pathways that do these things must be set in motion by thermodynamically favorable events.

For instance, imagine rocks falling off a cliff onto the ground. The kinetic energy is being converted into heat and sound. This is useless. But if we set up a turbine underneath the rock which powers a small hydraulic pump, we are obtaining useful work from free energy.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

It amazes me to see how a simple idea can be over analyzed until the perceived question differes entirely from the acctual question.

deludedgod, the science forum is under the Yellow Number Five heading but thanks for that wealth of info.

Free Thinking, i appreciate your post and you're right. Our intellect could perceive patterns in such a system of chaos. But, without some foundation of order, it seems to me, these patterns would vanish. Without a means to be established and become recurring they would have no bearing on the system.

deludedgod, the science forum is under the Yellow Number Five heading but thanks for that wealth of info.

Your analogy is merely a rehashed version of the entropy argument. i have refuted it. I have shown that order can come from chaos, using simple mathematical functions. Have you a rebuttal?

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

It amazes me to see how a simple idea can be over analyzed until the perceived question differes entirely from the acctual question.

deludedgod, the science forum is under the Yellow Number Five heading but thanks for that wealth of info.

Free Thinking, i appreciate your post and you're right. Our intellect could perceive patterns in such a system of chaos. But, without some foundation of order, it seems to me, these patterns would vanish. Without a means to be established and become recurring they would have no bearing on the system.

You're right Gershom. The logic scheme you set up doesn't even come close to illustrating how life violates of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. As long as it wasn't the intended purpose of your question you're doing fine. So I guess we're just pondering the wonders of shredded paper.

Of course if it was a rhetorical question trying to show life as a violation of the 2nd law, it's utterly failed. All life requires the entropy of neighboring matter in order to exist and yes, evolve. Abiogenesis requires the 2nd law in the same manner. The natural world could never be without the 2nd law. It seems that whole "closed system" element of the 2nd law description is always overlooked by creationists.

But I'm digressing. Sorry. Your query was about torn up pieces of paper. I'm not interested.

I'm curious what distinguishes a pattern from chaos. Let's say we ripped apart piece of paper and tossed it into the air. It would no longer fit the abstract idea of order, the rectangle, we recognize among the otherwise disordered collection of fibers and binders. However, each piece of paper will fall to the floor within certain parameters; each piece interacts with the air on the way down in a certain way; two pieces will interact with eachother in predictable ways as they fall. While the dynamic of such an action is complex, perhaps too complex for us to predict perfectly as we'd have to account for many variables that might not be clear at the time, it won't produce results outside a range of expectations. The pieces won't cease to be paper spontaneously because they've lost our idea of "order."Then there's the question of what constitutes a pattern. Is the rectangle orderly because we understand the parameters of its shape? Our brains developed pattern recognition for survival, not to help us answer existential questions. We're good at recognizing things to eat and things that want to eat us. Couldn't a lot of things constitute patterns which are simply unreconizable to us?Don't molecules more or less behave in predictable ways? I'm a layman, but it's not hard to imagine complex dynamics forming simply out of the interaction of things that behave in predictable ways.

Chaos is what we can't predict. Order is what we can. If you can predict it, there's order in there. If you can't, then either there is no order, or you just don't have the right understanding to make good predictions.

E.g. An encrypted message will look completely random, unpredictable, and chaotic to the average person. But give that person the decryption algorithm and the proper keys (i.e. understanding), and they can extract the hidden order in the chaos.

Chaos is what we can't predict. Order is what we can. If you can predict it, there's order in there. If you can't, then either there is no order, or you just don't have the right understanding to make good predictions.

E.g. An encrypted message will look completely random, unpredictable, and chaotic to the average person. But give that person the decryption algorithm and the proper keys (i.e. understanding), and they can extract the hidden order in the chaos.

Are you suggesting that order and chaos are dependant on human knowledge? Our ability to observe and predict complex systems (weather, liquid flow, etc) has vastly increased over the years.

I am not clear on which chaos is being discussed. Are we talking about mathematical chaos or mythical chaos? I will eschew mythical chaos as an absurdity. However, your pieces of paper being thrown seems to represent a nonlinear dynamic system, which is the key to Chaos Theory.

Your experiment starts with a system with a sensitive dependence to initial conditions. A small change at the beginning leads to a large difference in the end (butterfly theory). As a result of this sensativity, flipping the paper the same way twice would appear to be impossible; ergo, the same result twice also appears impossible. Thus, we perceive the resulting events to be utterly random. But are they?

No, not really. I will refer to a Koch curve for this portion. If one has an equilateral triangle and adds another equilateral triangle to the middle third of each side, then the initial appearance of the curve appears completely random. If one continues the process, the Koch curve is realized, and therein is a contradiction. The line can be infinitely long but it actually has an internal area less than the natural curve which surrounds the triangles tangentially. This is the development of a fractal pattern. We are provided a very simple nonlinear dynamic system that is changed dramatically if altered initially and appears to become ordered when replicated. However, that order tends to be paradoxical in the resulting two conclusions above with regard to length and area.

So, your bits of paper are like a Koch curve, but they are nearly infinitely more complex than the Koch curve. So, in the end, there will be a mathematical order that will form but we have difficulty seeing it.

There are natural occurances of this system as well. They appear chaotic but have a simple fractal explanations. Some are electrical discharge from clouds, the growth of synapses, and the growth of tree branches. They follow a simple pattern made in a set. The set is defined as z=z(2)+c. C is your initial figure and acts as the first z. Repeat. It appears random but develops a mathematical pattern that looks like the natural events above.

What is the end result. From what appears to be chaos, there is actually mathematical certainty. Where there is mathematical certainty laws can be derived. So, replace chaos with complexity, and the point is one of interest.

In other words, you only showed that for order to come from chaos, something or someone will have to cause a reaction to make it happen.

Yes. And that something is the Sun. And in the context of the universe, that something is free energy. His thought experiment is meant to refute evolution by suggesting that order cannot come from chaos. I have shown this false. Please read it again and look at the complementation formulae dictating the nature of entropy.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

In other words, you only showed that for order to come from chaos, something or someone will have to cause a reaction to make it happen.

Yes. And that something is the Sun. And in the context of the universe, that something is free energy. His thought experiment is meant to refute evolution by suggesting that order cannot come from chaos. I have shown this false. Please read it again and look at the complementation formulae dictating the nature of entropy.

Hmmm... But if you really think about it, your example strictly speaking is of order coming from order. Consider the fact that for your example to work the following would need to be present:

1) presence of a specific environment

2) presence of a specific catalyst (in this case, the sun)

3) presence and application of a specific law of nature.

the absence of just one of the above would result in your formula being ineffective.

Even if your example would work, it would only function under controlled conditions which can only be natural now. But we don't really know the conditions in the past. For example, the sun was not always there. It is reasonable to assume that at some point in time the sun didn't exhist.

Even if your example would work, it would only function under controlled conditions which can only be natural now. But we don't really know the conditions in the past. For example, the sun was not always there. It is reasonable to assume that at some point in time the sun didn't exhist.

His argument was against evolution. So in the context of his arguments, the sun was always there.

curiousjorg wrote:

1) presence of a specific environment

The laws of thermodnyamics are iron, and work under any enivornment.

curiousjorge wrote:

2) presence of a specific catalyst (in this case, the sun)

No specific needed. Just a source of free energy. This concept is intrisicatelly linked to entropy. I urge you to study basic biomolecular kinetics.

[quote-curiousjorge]

3) presence and application of a specific law of nature.

The laws of thermodynamics are iron. Nothing can contradict them. I cannot make head nor tail of your statement. Thermodynamics is uniform throughout the universe.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

You're putting something into an existing system causing it to be considered an open one.

The answer is that there would be no 'UP'. I would not expect the pieces of paper to 'fall'. And finally, if they did it would not be in any order because they would not have anything else affecting them.

There is no violation of the laws of thermodynamics. There is only people who choose to ignore the natural elements in the systems to be analyzed.

In the analogy of throwing pieces of paper into the air, you make the assumption that there is air and gravity and a surface for the paper to land upon.

So let's go back and use the rest of the system and analyze why it would be highly improbable for someone to cause the pieces of paper to fall into specific words.

Even if your example would work, it would only function under controlled conditions which can only be natural now. But we don't really know the conditions in the past. For example, the sun was not always there. It is reasonable to assume that at some point in time the sun didn't exhist.

His argument was against evolution. So in the context of his arguments, the sun was always there.

curiousjorg wrote:

1) presence of a specific environment

The laws of thermodnyamics are iron, and work under any enivornment.

curiousjorge wrote:

2) presence of a specific catalyst (in this case, the sun)

No specific needed. Just a source of free energy. This concept is intrisicatelly linked to entropy. I urge you to study basic biomolecular kinetics.

[quote-curiousjorge]

3) presence and application of a specific law of nature.

The laws of thermodynamics are iron. Nothing can contradict them. I cannot make head nor tail of your statement. Thermodynamics is uniform throughout the universe.

Wow that was quick!

I agree with you that the law of thermodynamics is constant throughout the universe, throughout space, but not necessarily throughout time. Think about it. If you use your formula to explain the formation of order on earth, then it would be natural to use that same formula to explain order on the sun, the moon, the stars and the entire universe!

What i'm saying is that there is a beginning for everything. Let's try to go back, before the formation of the earth, before the other planets were formed, before the sun, before the milky way. Before everything.

They say that everything began with the big bang.

First there was absolutely nothing. Not a single molecule, atom, electron, or neuron. Nothing. Possibly not even the laws of the known universe exhisted because if everything has a beginning, the same principle should apply to the exhisting laws of science. (i'm just speculating at this point since i wasn't there taking notes when everything in the universe started)

You see, from my point of view, in trying to explain order coming from chaos, one would eventually have to explain where the elements from these come from. In other words, to explain how order comes from chaos, one would eventually have to explain where something (or in this case, everything) came from nothing.

And i'm not at this point aware of any formula that can make something out of nothing.

I hope that your not offended by my reasoning. I'm just airing what i think and wish to know your opinion on such matters. That way, i can learn as much as i can and enrich myself mentally.

I'm really grateful for your spending time to reply to my queries, and am specially grateful for not using deregatory language or the sort. Its been a while since i've taken this much time and effort in theorizing and am quite enjoying this exchange.

My hope is to learn from this site and use what i've learned in conversing with like minded individuals.

In my opinion, these ex nihilo arguments are futile. To me, it seems that these discussions inevitably lead to logical fallacy after logical fallacy.

When you say: "They say that everything began with the big bang.", Who is they?

Why not assume a beginning?

Is it a logical fallacy to assume that everything has a beginning just as everything has an end? Or would you rather believe that everything has always been the way we see it now and always will be? Nothing really lasts forever, not even the Sun (although it would go kaput in about 5 billion years from now) Therefore, and also due to the laws of nature, nothing is eternal, meaning everything started somewhere in the past.

I already know how a theist explains ex nihilo arguments. I really wish to know what an atheist thinks if he/she is willing to take the time to explain it to me.

The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.

In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître was the first to propose that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom. His proposal came after observing the red shift in distant nebulas by astronomers to a model of the universe based on relativity. Years later, Edwin Hubble found experimental evidence to help justify Lemaître's theory. He found that distant galaxies in every direction are going away from us with speeds proportional to their distance.

The big bang was initially suggested because it explains why distant galaxies are traveling away from us at great speeds. The theory also predicts the existence of cosmic background radiation (the glow left over from the explosion itself). The Big Bang Theory received its strongest confirmation when this radiation was discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize for this discovery.

Although the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, it probably will never be proved; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions.

Also, you could check wikipedia for a more detailed explanation of the Big Bang Theory.

Fact is, there has been numerous discussions regarding this "first cause" concept. But i see a pattern here:

1) theist says God or a "first cause" created everything and started the ball rolling to what we see now.

2) Atheist says that is illogical and therefore improbable.

3) Theist asks why

4) Atheist explains the logical improbabilities of such a statement.

but

He doesn't give a logical explanation of his own.

What follows is just explanations on how wrong the God theory is or that everything has always been what we see in the universe, and always will be. But can one honestly say that the universe has always been the way we see it now?

What i want to know is what theists think started the ball rolling in the universe.

I Just studied the chaos theory and it does not state that everything is entirely disorganized, it simply states that the more variables you must factor into a prediction the more difficult it is to create an accurate prediction. If i say your shirt looks nice today i can possibly predict you might feel a little better about yourself, but what i cant predict is maybe you feel so good about yourself that you are walking home and you see a homeless man and you decide to give him a hundred bucks, and I for sure cannot predict that that same homeless person decides to invest his 100$ in some stocks from a loser company that nobody thinks will make it off the ground, but then they make it big and he becomes a millionaire. On the flip side maybe I say your shirt looks nice and you give the hobo 100$ and he goes and buys himself alchohol and drinks himself to death. Either way the farther i venture and the more variables i must factor in make it exceedingly difficult to predict the final result of my actions. It could so happen to be that everything is organized to the minute point where everything is not chaos but organized, but in order to get that kind of detail and care you need a hefty amount of intelligence, order does not derive itself from chaos and energy does not overcome the second law of thermodynamics, the sun is a large quantity of energy, add it to my back and you get third degree burns and skin cancer.

I Just studied the chaos theory and it does not state that everything is entirely disorganized, it simply states that the more variables you must factor into a prediction the more difficult it is to create an accurate prediction. If i say your shirt looks nice today i can possibly predict you might feel a little better about yourself, but what i cant predict is maybe you feel so good about yourself that you are walking home and you see a homeless man and you decide to give him a hundred bucks, and I for sure cannot predict that that same homeless person decides to invest his 100$ in some stocks from a loser company that nobody thinks will make it off the ground, but then they make it big and he becomes a millionaire. On the flip side maybe I say your shirt looks nice and you give the hobo 100$ and he goes and buys himself alchohol and drinks himself to death. Either way the farther i venture and the more variables i must factor in make it exceedingly difficult to predict the final result of my actions. It could so happen to be that everything is organized to the minute point where everything is not chaos but organized, but in order to get that kind of detail and care you need a hefty amount of intelligence, order does not derive itself from chaos and energy does not overcome the second law of thermodynamics, the sun is a large quantity of energy, add it to my back and you get third degree burns and skin cancer.

Chaos theory is not just about the number of variables, it is about non-linear feedback, and can apply even if there are only a few variables.

And the second law of thermodynamics explicitly tells us how much energy at what temperature is required to move heat from a cold body to a hotter, or to reduce entropy by whatever amount.

the argument about the monkeys typing would produce a piece of literature: we all know...becomes after a thousand monkeys and a thousand years ..that you MAY get? LOL

i wanna know where those monkeys got the typewriters...if everything can be random plus enough time.

People set up computer programs to come up with brand new programs using the Darwinian process - small random variations, plus systematic testing for the ones which work best for some particular task. Look up 'genetic algorithms'.

Random changes are ultimately the only source of truly novel ideas, or new structures of matter, otherwise you are stuck with something that is directly derivable from what you started with.

The key points are that most changes occur in very small steps, followed by some testing process to winnow out the changes that don't work as well, eg 'natural selection'. That vastly increases the chances of hitting on some new 'design', compared to trying to get there in one step involving all the changes occurring at once.

the argument about the monkeys typing would produce a piece of literature: we all know...becomes after a thousand monkeys and a thousand years ..that you MAY get? LOL

i wanna know where those monkeys got the typewriters...if everything can be random plus enough time.

People set up computer programs to come up with brand new programs using the Darwinian process - small random variations, plus systematic testing for the ones which work best for some particular task. Look up 'genetic algorithms'.

Random changes are ultimately the only source of truly novel ideas, or new structures of matter, otherwise you are stuck with something that is directly derivable from what you started with.

The key points are that most changes occur in very small steps, followed by some testing process to winnow out the changes that don't work as well, eg 'natural selection'. That vastly increases the chances of hitting on some new 'design', compared to trying to get there in one step involving all the changes occurring at once.

I argue regularly and at length with people who insist the universe shows order and use Lamborghini Contachs as their proof that oxidised iron will not evolve into complex shapes. They ignore the fact most things are in a cycle of decay and renewal that shows no intelligent design. There are a number of creative processes in the universe including star nurseries, stars, the processes of life and the sentient actions of living organisms.

These work in layers in creativity with the creation of stars leading to the creation of carbon compounds and other chemicals and processes on earth adding to their molecular complexity. With these more complex molecules in place simple life was able to form at least once and once formed it continued to evolve into complex forms.

Now, you'd assume given the 50,000 billion stars in the universe that there's an enormously high chance stars and their attendant planets will form. The chance life will form is surely lower but once life forms and becomes multicellular, the chances that it would evolve into higher orders over long periods of time would be very high.

Once life becomes more complex, the chances it will become creative would be lower but still high enough. The idea that the existence of everything in the universe and on the earth can be related to ridiculously unlikely baseline problems of chance is fallacious.

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck

A universe of pure chaos probably would remain so, but that is not what we have.

We have a vast number of a few varieties of fundamental particles, which leads to a mixture of order and randomness.

Having a large number of identical particles can lead to the opposite of chaos, like the way a tray of identical billiard balls will settle into a perfectly regular triangular array against one side if he tray is gently tilted, maybe with a little gentle, random jiggling.

So what we see is a blend of chaos and order, allowing little islands of regularity and high degrees of order to arise, given the right conditions. The randomness and the size of the universe increases the likelihood that somewhere there will be just the right conditions for something like life to arise.

Complex life only really needs a basic self-reproducing system to form, then evolution can kick in, and away we go.

It has already been shown how some of the key elements of a self-replicating system can form spontaneously, such as bits of RNA, so it really isn't that much of a stretch. It is a bit hard to duplicate in the lab all the possible environments that may have existed on primeval earth over a period of millions of years, so the fact that we seem to be already getting somewhere is very promising.

I'm pretty sure I was trying to say something like this but ended up going off sideways, as usual. Using terms like chaos and chance just aren't applicable, I think. The nature of the universe allows certain possibilities and assures that in certain circumstances there are predictable outcomes - complex life being one of them.

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck

I'm pretty sure I was trying to say something like this but ended up going off sideways, as usual. Using terms like chaos and chance just aren't applicable, I think. The nature of the universe allows certain possibilities and assures that in certain circumstances there are predictable outcomes - complex life being one of them.

It occurs to me I could rephrase things.

Can a system that has entered a chaotic mode change to a more orderly mode?

Absolutely. That is a very common characteristic of such systems - small changes of conditions can flip them between chaotic and more orderly cycles.

Fact is, there has been numerous discussions regarding this "first cause" concept. But i see a pattern here:

1) theist says God or a "first cause" created everything and started the ball rolling to what we see now.

2) Atheist says that is illogical and therefore improbable.

3) Theist asks why

4) Atheist explains the logical improbabilities of such a statement.

but

He doesn't give a logical explanation of his own.

What follows is just explanations on how wrong the God theory is or that everything has always been what we see in the universe, and always will be. But can one honestly say that the universe has always been the way we see it now?

What i want to know is what theists think started the ball rolling in the universe.

Since nobody else has responded I will give it a shot.

The argument of God being a "first cause" has problems of it's own. What was God's first cause? The first cause of God's first cause? And so on. Theists like to refute this by saying "God is eternal and all-powerful" which is pretty convenient isn't it? Especially since your argument was originally that everything must have a beginning.

Why do atheists explain the fallacies of "God" but fail to give logical explanations of their own?

I think, for me anyway, it is because there isn't one. We can only give logical explanations of that which we can observe and study. We can come up with, based on these observations, ideas that might be more probable than others but we can't really be 100% accurate when it comes to things like the beginning of everything (if there is one). We just aren't capable of knowing such things.

The difference between atheists and theists seems to be with the comfort level of not knowing for sure. I am ok with saying "at this point, I don't know". Theists tend to jump straight to the supernatural to fill the gaps. It's been that way since the beginning of humans. It's why there are religions.

There may very well be an all-powerful super natural creator, but, at this point, there is no logical reason to believe such a thing; besides the fact that Mom and Dad, friends, et al. planted that idea in our heads when we were young.

If I toss a bunch of paper pieces, then I expect them to spread out. Going from a stack to spread out is an increase of entropy and also an increase in disorder. If I were to throw the papers in a very small box, they wouldn't spread out as much, and thus have lower entropy. However, in the frame of the box, the papers would look disordered, because they would fill the box almost uniformly. If the box was the universe, we would say the universe was very disordered.

If I then take that box and dump the paper onto the floor of my bedroom, I will have a big pile of paper. The entropy of the paper doesn't change much in this process. However, from the room's perspective the paper appears very ordered (it's all in a small pile, instead of uniformly filling the space).

What people don't seem to understand about entropy is that it's not a direct measure of disorder in the way that laymen use the term. If the size of a system changes, the maximum entropy will change. A disorganized room will look more organized if all its contents are left in the same relative location to one another, but moved as a group into a small corner of a warehouse, yet the entropy won't change. So in the way most people use the terms order and disorder, entropy is not a direct measurement of disorder. A more acurrate measurement would be something like entropy divided by maximum entropy.

Since the universe has been expanding for billions of years, there is no contradiction in its entropy increasing while its order also increases. This is because expansion increases the maximum entropy. So if a system is expanding fast enough, its maximum entropy can increase faster than its actual entropy, which will make it look more ordered despite having a higher entropy.

Fact is, there has been numerous discussions regarding this "first cause" concept. But i see a pattern here:

1) theist says God or a "first cause" created everything and started the ball rolling to what we see now.

2) Atheist says that is illogical and therefore improbable.

3) Theist asks why

4) Atheist explains the logical improbabilities of such a statement.

but

He doesn't give a logical explanation of his own.

What follows is just explanations on how wrong the God theory is or that everything has always been what we see in the universe, and always will be. But can one honestly say that the universe has always been the way we see it now?

What i want to know is what theists think started the ball rolling in the universe.

Since nobody else has responded I will give it a shot.

The argument of God being a "first cause" has problems of it's own. What was God's first cause? The first cause of God's first cause? And so on. Theists like to refute this by saying "God is eternal and all-powerful" which is pretty convenient isn't it? Especially since your argument was originally that everything must have a beginning.

Why do atheists explain the fallacies of "God" but fail to give logical explanations of their own?

I think, for me anyway, it is because there isn't one. We can only give logical explanations of that which we can observe and study. We can come up with, based on these observations, ideas that might be more probable than others but we can't really be 100% accurate when it comes to things like the beginning of everything (if there is one). We just aren't capable of knowing such things.

The difference between atheists and theists seems to be with the comfort level of not knowing for sure. I am ok with saying "at this point, I don't know". Theists tend to jump straight to the supernatural to fill the gaps. It's been that way since the beginning of humans. It's why there are religions.

There may very well be an all-powerful super natural creator, but, at this point, there is no logical reason to believe such a thing; besides the fact that Mom and Dad, friends, et al. planted that idea in our heads when we were young.

Quote:

We just aren't capable of knowing such things.

But we do have tools that can observe reality and through falsification we can discard bad data and bad claims.

IF there is an "all powerful super natural creator"(highly and fleetingly unlikely) it cannot be anything postulated in human history so far.

I cannot see any future where we discover a thought arises out of a non-material process, much less a thought occurring from a super natural non-material entity.

Everything that we find in biology INCLUDING things that "think" is a result of evolution, not ancient superstition.

Thoughts are certainly observable like human legs running makes the running a result of a material process even though "running" is not a thing itself.

I assert that all the god/s and even more new age pantheism where the universe itself is a giant thinking entity, are nothing but the rehashed anthropomorphism of antiquity where people are merely projecting human qualities on the world around them.

The "God/god/diety/super natural" claims of human history cannot logically be real, much less testable or falsifiable.

So I warn of feeding believers the line "there might be". Yea, I might get a blow job from Angelina Jolie. God existing has even less of a possibility of being a reality.

I think humanity should just dump any idea of a super hero existing and stop projecting their wishes in the form of fictional utopias that don't exist.

Instead of fueling them with "however slight the chance", why not simply say, "dude, dump the old fairy tales and lets deal with what we do know".

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

Complex organisms, such as living things, come from a combination or order and chaos.

There needs to a basic simplicity, which we get from the relatively small number of kinds of elementary particles, which are identical within each kind.

The vast number of such particles which comprise our reality then allows for the emergence of ordered structures, with the actions of randomness/chaos allowing for the generating all the various possible configurations which are stable enough to persist.

A basic example is of a pile of identical spheres, such as billiard balls. Just drop them on a billiard table, and they will be randomly arranged. Tilt the table a bit, so they roll up against one side, and some order will appear. Gently shake the table, and they will form a perfectly ordered array of balls arranged in a triangular matrix.

Shake them up more violently, and they will become disordered again, bouncing off each other.

It can be seen in Natural Selection. A bunch of closely related organisms, reproducing with just enough random variation, can evolve into many different things, some simpler, some more complex.

Simpler ordered structures also come from simple processes, such as the perfectly conical pile of sand that forms under a steady stream falling from a fixed source, relying only on the consistent size and properties of the sand grains.

A perfectly ordered universe would be static and sterile.

It is the existence of both underlying order and random and/or chaotic processes that leads to to the possibility of rich and relatively dynamic regions arising within our universe.

Order was never the intended result of chaos. Just ask my friend who was killed by an IED. It's been a few years now and we are still waiting for chaos to bring him back to life.

Please use your simple math to prove the order of chaos in this case.

Best regards,

Chimp

Your friend was lucky to have the laws of nature bring him about in the first place. It's highly unlikely, and for all practical purposes impossible, that someone will evolve in exactly the same way, with exactly the same experiences and memories, as your friend. Maybe there's another universe out there which produced a world with your friend in it where he didn't die, and using advanced technology they could bring him back to this universe. But, the multiverse theory is an assumption. You'll have to be grateful that he was born in the first place -- itself a highly unlikely event.

Regarding your first sentence, there is no intention in chaos. As far as we know, animals are the only phenomena that have agency.

Atheism in itself is a religion. Every Atheist abides in nonfactual, unproven, non scientific theories such as: Darwin's Evolution (We must believe cuz, billions of years and no cross over fossils ever found, ever), Big Bang Theory (We must believe cuz this can not and will never be proven) and Life on other planets (We must believe cuz this can not and will never be proven). Faith in things never seen is understandable (God) however belief in these systems can only be explained as a religion.

Static universe models match most observations with no adjustable parameters. The Big Bang can match each of the critical observations, but only with adjustable parameters, one of which (the cosmic deceleration parameter) requires mutually exclusive values to match different tests. [[2],[3]] Without ad hoc theorizing, this point alone falsifies the Big Bang. Even if the discrepancy could be explained, Occam’s razor favors the model with fewer adjustable parameters – the static universe model.

(2)The microwave “background” makes more sense as the limiting temperature of space heated by starlight than as the remnant of a fireball.

The expression “the temperature of space” is the title of chapter 13 of Sir Arthur Eddington’s famous 1926 work, [[4]] Eddington calculated the minimum temperature any body in space would cool to, given that it is immersed in the radiation of distant starlight. With no adjustable parameters, he obtained 3°K (later refined to 2.8°K [[5]]), essentially the same as the observed, so-called “background”, temperature. A similar calculation, although with less certain accuracy, applies to the limiting temperature of intergalactic space because of the radiation of galaxy light. [[6]] So the intergalactic matter is like a “fog”, and would therefore provide a simpler explanation for the microwave radiation, including its blackbody-shaped spectrum.

Such a fog also explains the otherwise troublesome ratio of infrared to radio intensities of radio galaxies. [[7]] The amount of radiation emitted by distant galaxies falls with increasing wavelengths, as expected if the longer wavelengths are scattered by the intergalactic medium. For example, the brightness ratio of radio galaxies at infrared and radio wavelengths changes with distance in a way which implies absorption. Basically, this means that the longer wavelengths are more easily absorbed by material between the galaxies. But then the microwave radiation (between the two wavelengths) should be absorbed by that medium too, and has no chance to reach us from such great distances, or to remain perfectly uniform while doing so. It must instead result from the radiation of microwaves from the intergalactic medium. This argument alone implies that the microwaves could not be coming directly to us from a distance beyond all the galaxies, and therefore that the Big Bang theory cannot be correct.

None of the predictions of the background temperature based on the Big Bang were close enough to qualify as successes, the worst being Gamow’s upward-revised estimate of 50°K made in 1961, just two years before the actual discovery. Clearly, without a realistic quantitative prediction, the Big Bang’s hypothetical “fireball” becomes indistinguishable from the natural minimum temperature of all cold matter in space. But none of the predictions, which ranged between 5°K and 50°K, matched observations. [[8]] And the Big Bang offers no explanation for the kind of intensity variations with wavelength seen in radio galaxies.

(3)Element abundance predictions using the Big Bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work.

The universal abundances of most elements were predicted correctly by Hoyle in the context of the original Steady State cosmological model. This worked for all elements heavier than lithium. The Big Bang co-opted those results and concentrated on predicting the abundances of the light elements. Each such prediction requires at least one adjustable parameter unique to that element prediction. Often, it’s a question of figuring out why the element was either created or destroyed or both to some degree following the Big Bang. When you take away these degrees of freedom, no genuine prediction remains. The best the Big Bang can claim is consistency with observations using the various ad hoc models to explain the data for each light element. Examples: [[9],[10]] for helium-3; [[11]] for lithium-7; [[12]] for deuterium; [[13]] for beryllium; and [[14],[15]] for overviews. For a full discussion of an alternative origin of the light elements, see [[16]].

(4)The universe has too much large scale structure (interspersed “walls” and voids) to form in a time as short as 10-20 billion years.

The average speed of galaxies through space is a well-measured quantity. At those speeds, galaxies would require roughly the age of the universe to assemble into the largest structures (superclusters and walls) we see in space [[17]], and to clear all the voids between galaxy walls. But this assumes that the initial directions of motion are special, e.g., directed away from the centers of voids. To get around this problem, one must propose that galaxy speeds were initially much higher and have slowed due to some sort of “viscosity” of space. To form these structures by building up the needed motions through gravitational acceleration alone would take in excess of 100 billion years. [[18]]

(5)The average luminosity of quasars must decrease with time in just the right way so that their average apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely.

According to the Big Bang theory, a quasar at a redshift of 1 is roughly ten times as far away as one at a redshift of 0.1. (The redshift-distance relation is not quite linear, but this is a fair approximation.) If the two quasars were intrinsically similar, the high redshift one would be about 100 times fainter because of the inverse square law. But it is, on average, of comparable apparent brightness. This must be explained as quasars “evolving” their intrinsic properties so that they get smaller and fainter as the universe evolves. That way, the quasar at redshift 1 can be intrinsically 100 times brighter than the one at 0.1, explaining why they appear (on average) to be comparably bright. It isn’t as if the Big Bang has a reason why quasars should evolve in just this magical way. But that is required to explain the observations using the Big Bang interpretation of the redshift of quasars as a measure of cosmological distance. See [[19],[20]].

By contrast, the relation between apparent magnitude and distance for quasars is a simple, inverse-square law in alternative cosmologies. In [20], Arp shows great quantities of evidence that large quasar redshifts are a combination of a cosmological factor and an intrinsic factor, with the latter dominant in most cases. Most large quasar redshifts (e.g., z > 1) therefore have little correlation with distance. A grouping of 11 quasars close to NGC 1068, having nominal ejection patterns correlated with galaxy rotation, provides further strong evidence that quasar redshifts are intrinsic. [[21]]

(6)The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe.

Even though the data have been stretched in the direction toward resolving this since the “top ten” list first appeared, the error bars on the Hubble age of the universe (12±2 Gyr) still do not quite overlap the error bars on the oldest globular clusters (16±2 Gyr). Astronomers have studied this for the past decade, but resist the “observational error” explanation because that would almost certainly push the Hubble age older (as Sandage has been arguing for years), which creates several new problems for the Big Bang. In other words, the cure is worse than the illness for the theory. In fact, a new, relatively bias-free observational technique has gone the opposite way, lowering the Hubble age estimate to 10 Gyr, making the discrepancy worse again. [[22],[23]]

(7)The local streaming motions of galaxies are too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere uniform.

In the early 1990s, we learned that the average redshift for galaxies of a given brightness differs on opposite sides of the sky. The Big Bang interprets this as the existence of a puzzling group flow of galaxies relative to the microwave radiation on scales of at least 130 Mpc. Earlier, the existence of this flow led to the hypothesis of a "Great Attractor" pulling all these galaxies in its direction. But in newer studies, no backside infall was found on the other side of the hypothetical feature. Instead, there is streaming on both sides of us out to 60-70 Mpc in a consistent direction relative to the microwave "background". The only Big Bang alternative to the apparent result of large-scale streaming of galaxies is that the microwave radiation is in motion relative to us. Either way, this result is trouble for the Big Bang. [[24],[25],[26],[27],[28]]

(Invisible dark matter of an unknown but non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire universe.

The Big Bang requires sprinkling galaxies, clusters, superclusters, and the universe with ever-increasing amounts of this invisible, not-yet-detected “dark matter” to keep the theory viable. Overall, over 90% of the universe must be made of something we have never detected. By contrast, Milgrom’s model (the alternative to “dark matter&rdquo provides a one-parameter explanation that works at all scales and requires no “dark matter” to exist at any scale. (I exclude the additional 50%-100% of invisible ordinary matter inferred to exist by, e.g., MACHO studies.) Some physicists don’t like modifying the law of gravity in this way, but a finite range for natural forces is a logical necessity (not just theory) spoken of since the 17th century. [[29],[30]]

Milgrom’s model requires nothing more than that. Milgrom’s is an operational model rather than one based on fundamentals. But it is consistent with more complete models invoking a finite range for gravity. So Milgrom’s model provides a basis to eliminate the need for “dark matter” in the universe at any scale. This represents one more Big Bang “fudge factor” no longer needed.

(9)The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them having higher redshifts (z = 6-7) than the highest-redshift quasars.

The Big Bang requires that stars, quasars and galaxies in the early universe be “primitive”, meaning mostly metal-free, because it requires many generations of supernovae to build up metal content in stars. But the latest evidence suggests lots of metal in the “earliest” quasars and galaxies. [[31],[32],[33]] Moreover, we now have evidence for numerous ordinary galaxies in what the Big Bang expected to be the “dark age” of evolution of the universe, when the light of the few primitive galaxies in existence would be blocked from view by hydrogen clouds. [[34]]

(10)If the open universe we see today is extrapolated back near the beginning, the ratio of the actual density of matter in the universe to the critical density must differ from unity by just a part in 1059. Any larger deviation would result in a universe already collapsed on itself or already dissipated.

Inflation failed to achieve its goal when many observations went against it. To maintain consistency and salvage inflation, the Big Bang has now introduced two new adjustable parameters: (1) the cosmological constant, which has a major fine-tuning problem of its own because theory suggests it ought to be of order 10120, and observations suggest a value less than 1; and (2) “quintessence” or “dark energy”. [[35],[36]] This latter theoretical substance solves the fine-tuning problem by introducing invisible, undetectable energy sprinkled at will as needed throughout the universe to keep consistency between theory and observations. It can therefore be accurately described as “the ultimate fudge factor”.

Anyone doubting the Big Bang in its present form (which includes most astronomy-interested people outside the field of astronomy, according to one recent survey) would have good cause for that opinion and could easily defend such a position. This is a fundamentally different matter than proving the Big Bang did not happen, which would be proving a negative – something that is normally impossible. (E.g., we cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist.) The Big Bang, much like the Santa Claus hypothesis, no longer makes testable predictions wherein proponents agree that a failure would falsify the hypothesis. Instead, the theory is continually amended to account for all new, unexpected discoveries. Indeed, many young scientists now think of this as a normal process in science! They forget or were never taught that a model has value only when it can predict new things that differentiate the model from chance and from other models before the new things are discovered. Explanations of new things are supposed to flow from the basic theory itself with at most an adjustable parameter or two, and not from add-on bits of new theory.

Of course, the literature also contains the occasional review paper in support of the Big Bang. [[37]] But these generally don’t count any of the prediction failures or surprises as theory failures as long as some ad hoc theory might explain them. And the “prediction successes” in almost every case do not distinguish the Big Bang from any of the four leading competitor models: Quasi-Steady-State [16,[38]], Plasma Cosmology [18], Meta Model [3], and Variable-Mass Cosmology [20].

For the most part, these four alternative cosmologies are ignored by astronomers. However, one web site by Ned Wright does try to advance counterarguments in defense of the Big Bang. [[39]] But his counterarguments are mostly old objections long since defeated. For example:

(1)In “Eddington did not predict the CMB”:

a.Wright argues that Eddington’s argument for the “temperature of space” applies at most to our Galaxy. But Eddington’s reasoning applies also to the temperature of intergalactic space, for which a minimum is set by the radiation of galaxy and quasar light. The original calculations half-a-century ago showed this limit probably fell in the range 1-6°K. [6] And that was before quasars were discovered and before we knew the modern space density of galaxies.

b.Wright also argues that dust grains cannot be the source of the blackbody microwave radiation because there are not enough of them to be opaque, as needed to produce a blackbody spectrum. However, opaqueness is required only in a finite universe. An infinite universe can achieve thermodynamic equilibrium (the actual requirement for a blackbody spectrum) even if transparent out to very large distances because the thermal mixing can occur on a much smaller scale than quantum particles – e.g., in the light-carrying medium itself.

c.Wright argues that dust grains do not radiate efficiently at millimeter wavelengths. However, efficient or not, if the equilibrium temperature they reach is 2.8°K, they must radiate away the energy they absorb from distant galaxy and quasar light at millimeter wavelengths. Temperature and wavelength are correlated for any bodies in thermal equilibrium.

(2)About Lerner’s argument against the Big Bang:

a.Lerner calculated that the Big Bang universe has not had enough time to form superclusters. Wright calculates that all the voids could be vacated and superclusters formed in less than 11-14 billion years (barely). But that assumes that almost all matter has initial speeds headed directly out of voids and toward matter concentrations. Lerner, on the other hand, assumed that the speeds had to be built up by gravitational attraction, which takes many times longer. Lerner’s point is more reasonable because doing it Wright’s way requires fine-tuning of initial conditions.

b.Wright argues that “there is certainly lots of evidence for dark matter.” The reality is that there is no credible observational detection of dark matter, so all the “evidence” is a matter of interpretation, depending on theoretical assumptions. For example, Milgrom’s Model explains all the same evidence without any need for dark matter.

(3)Regarding arguments against “tired light cosmology”:

a.Wright argues: “There is no known interaction that can degrade a photon's energy without also changing its momentum, which leads to a blurring of distant objects which is not observed.” While it is technically true that no such interaction has yet been discovered, reasonable non-Big-Bang cosmologies require the existence of entities many orders of magnitude smaller than photons. For example, the entity responsible for gravitational interactions has not yet been discovered. So the “fuzzy image” argument does not apply to realistic physical models in which all substance is infinitely divisible. By contrast, physical models lacking infinite divisibility have great difficulties explaining Zeno’s paradoxes – especially the extended paradox for matter. [3]

b.Wright argues that the stretching of supernovae light curves is not predicted by “tired light”. However, one cannot measure the stretching effect directly because the time under the lightcurve depends on the intrinsic brightness of the supernovae, which can vary considerably. So one must use indirect indicators, such as rise time only. And in that case, the data does not unambiguously favor either tired light or Big Bang models.

c.Wright argued that tired light does not produce a blackbody spectrum. But this is untrue if the entities producing the energy loss are many orders of magnitude smaller and more numerous than quantum particles.

d.Wright argues that tired light models fail the Tolman surface brightness test. This ignores that realistic tired light models must lose energy in the transverse direction, not just the longitudinal one, because light is a transverse wave. When this effect is considered, the predicted loss of light intensity goes with (1+z)-2, which is in good agreement with most observations without any adjustable parameters. [ NOTEREF _Ref4051228 \h \* MERGEFORMAT 2,[40]] The Big Bang, by contrast, predicts a (1+z)-4 dependence, and must therefore invoke special ad hoc evolution (different from that applicable to quasars) to close the gap between theory and observations.

By no means is this “top ten” list of Big Bang problems exhaustive – far from it. In fact, it is easy to argue that several of these additional 20 points should be among the “top ten”:

·"Pencil-beam surveys" show large-scale structure out to distances of more than 1 Gpc in both of two opposite directions from us. This appears as a succession of wall-like galaxy features at fairly regular intervals, the first of which, at about 130 Mpc distance, is called "The Great Wall". To date, 13 such evenly-spaced "walls" of galaxies have been found! [[41]] The Big Bang theory requires fairly uniform mixing on scales of distance larger than about 20 Mpc, so there apparently is far more large-scale structure in the universe than the Big Bang can explain.

·Many particles are seen with energies over 60x1018 eV. But that is the theoretical energy limit for anything traveling more than 20-50 Mpc because of interaction with microwave background photons. [[42]] However, this objection assumes the microwave radiation is as the Big Bang expects, instead of a relatively sparse, local phenomenon.

·The Big Bang predicts that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the initial explosion. Matter dominates the present universe apparently because of some form of asymmetry, such as CP violation asymmetry, that caused most anti-matter to annihilate with matter, but left much matter. Experiments are searching for evidence of this asymmetry, so far without success. Other galaxies can’t be antimatter because that would create a matter-antimatter boundary with the intergalactic medium that would create gamma rays, which are not seen. [[43],[44]]

·Even a small amount of diffuse neutral hydrogen would produce a smooth absorbing trough shortward of a QSO’s Lyman-alpha emission line. This is called the Gunn-Peterson effect, and is rarely seen, implying that most hydrogen in the universe has been re-ionized. A hydrogen Gunn-Peterson trough is now predicted to be present at a redshift z » 6.1. [[45]] Observations of high-redshift quasars near z = 6 briefly appeared to confirm this prediction. However, a galaxy lensed by a foreground cluster has now been observed at z = 6.56, prior to the supposed reionization epoch and at a time when the Big Bang expects no galaxies to be visible yet. Moreover, if only a few galaxies had turned on by this early point, their emission would have been absorbed by the surrounding hydrogen gas, making these early galaxies invisible. [34] So the lensed galaxy observation falsifies this prediction and the theory it was based on. Another problem example: Quasar PG 0052+251 is at the core of a normal spiral galaxy. The host galaxy appears undisturbed by the quasar radiation, which, in the Big Bang, is supposed to be strong enough to ionize the intergalactic medium. [[46]]

·An excess of QSOs is observed around foreground clusters. Lensing amplification caused by foreground galaxies or clusters is too weak to explain this association between high- and low-redshift objects. This apparent contradiction has no solution under Big Bang premises that does not create some other problem. It particular, dark matter solutions would have to be centrally concentrated, contrary to observations that imply that dark matter increases away from galaxy centers. The high-redshift and low-redshift objects are probably actually at comparable distances, as Arp has maintained for 30 years. [[47]]

·The Big Bang violates the first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be either created or destroyed, by requiring that new space filled with “zero-point energy” be continually created between the galaxies. [[48]]

·In the Las Campanas redshift survey, statistical differences from homogenous distribution were found out to a scale of at least 200 Mpc. [[49]] This is consistent with other galaxy catalog analyses that show no trends toward homogeneity even on scales up to 1000 Mpc. [[50]] The Big Bang, of course, requires large-scale homogeneity. The Meta Model and other infinite-universe models expect fractal behavior at all scales. Observations remain in agreement with that.

·Elliptical galaxies supposedly bulge along the axis of the most recent galaxy merger. But the angular velocities of stars at different distances from the center are all different, making an elliptical shape formed in that way unstable. Such velocities would shear the elliptical shape until it was smoothed into a circular disk. Where are the galaxies in the process of being sheared?

·The polarization of radio emission rotates as it passes through magnetized extragalactic plasmas. Such Faraday rotations in quasars should increase (on average) with distance. If redshift indicates distance, then rotation and redshift should increase together. However, the mean Faraday rotation is less near z = 2 than near z = 1 (where quasars are apparently intrinsically brightest, according to Arp’s model). [[51]]

·If the dark matter needed by the Big Bang exists, microwave radiation fluctuations should have “acoustic peaks” on angular scales of 1° and 0.3°, with the latter prominent compared with the former. By contrast, if Milgrom’s alternative to dark matter (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) is correct, then the latter peak should be only about 20% of the former. Newly acquired data from the Boomerang balloon-borne instruments clearly favors the MOND interpretation over dark matter. [[52]]

·Redshifts are quantized for both galaxies [[53],[54]] and quasars [[55]]. So are other properties of galaxies. [[56]] This should not happen under Big Bang premises.

·The number density of optical quasars peaks at z = 2.5-3, and declines toward both lower and higher redshifts. At z = 5, it has dropped by a factor of about 20. This cannot be explained by dust extinction or survey incompleteness. The Big Bang predicts that quasars, the seeds of all galaxies, were most numerous at earliest epochs. [[57]]

·The falloff of the power spectrum at small scales can be used to determine the temperature of the intergalactic medium. It is typically inferred to be 20,000°K, but there is no evidence of evolution with redshift. Yet in the Big Bang, that temperature ought to adiabatically decrease as space expands everywhere. This is another indicator that the universe is not really expanding.] [[58]]

·Measurements of the two-point correlation function for optically selected galaxies follow an almost perfect power law over nearly three orders of magnitude in separation. However, this result disagrees with n-body simulations in all the Big Bang’s various modifications. A complex mixture of gravity, star formation, and dissipative hydrodynamics seems to be needed. [[60]]

·The absorption lines of damped Lyman-alpha systems are seen in quasars. However, the HST NICMOS spectrograph has searched to see these objects directly in the infrared, but failed for the most part to detect them. [[63]] Moreover, the relative abundances have surprising uniformity, unexplained in the Big Bang. [[64]] The simplest explanation is that the absorbers are in the quasar’s own environment, not at their redshift distance as the Big Bang requires.

·The luminosity evolution of brightest cluster galaxies (BGCs) cannot be adequately explained by a single evolutionary model. For example, BGCs with low x-ray luminosity are consistent with no evolution, while those with high x-ray luminosity are brighter on average at high redshift. [[65]]

·The fundamental question of why it is that at early cosmological times, bound aggregates of order 100,000 stars (globular clusters) were able to form remains unsolved in the Big Bang. It is no mystery in infinite universe models. [[66]]

·Blue galaxy counts show an excess of faint blue galaxies by a factor of 10 at magnitude 28. This implies that the volume of space is larger than in the Big Bang, where it should get smaller as one looks back in time. [[67]]

Perhaps never in the history of science has so much quality evidence accumulated against a model so widely accepted within a field. Even the most basic elements of the theory, the expansion of the universe and the fireball remnant radiation, remain interpretations with credible alternative explanations. One must wonder why, in this circumstance, that four good alternative models are not even being comparatively discussed by most astronomers.

Acknowledgments

Obviously, hundreds of professionals, both astronomers and scientists from other fields, have contributed to these findings, although few of them stand back and look at the bigger picture. It is hoped that many of them will add their comments and join as co-authors in an attempt to sway the upcoming generation of astronomers that the present cosmology is headed nowhere, and to join the search for better answers.

Atheism in itself is a religion. Every Atheist abides in nonfactual, unproven, non scientific theories such as: Darwin's Evolution (We must believe cuz, billions of years and no cross over fossils ever found, ever), Big Bang Theory (We must believe cuz this can not and will never be proven) and Life on other planets (We must believe cuz this can not and will never be proven). Faith in things never seen is understandable (God) however belief in these systems can only be explained as a religion.

Atheism is not a religion, it's a worldview that doesn't have deities in it. A religion is a worldview that has one or more deities in it, with rules for how humans should relate to the deity or deities, and rules for how humans should relate to each other and live their lives (usually involving aesthetic experiences). That's a minimal, workable definition of religion, and atheism does not fit it -- because atheists don't believe in deities and therefore have no relationship with any.

And just because someone is an atheist doesn't mean that they accept any science. It's possible to be an atheist on purely rational grounds, without knowing or believing in any science whatsoever. And for the record, evolution and the big bang have been proven -- it's settled. As far as life on other planets, where did you get that from? Astrobiologists are studying the possibilities of life on other planets, but there's no evidence of any yet.

My friend he, you, I, we did not evolve from a primate, bacteria or gas.

The Bible says..

Genesis 1:27 God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

If Genesis 1:27 is your alternate theory to evolution, you're going to need more than a proposition. Do you have any reasons to believe your proposition? Do you have any evidence? Right now your belief in God rests on an assumption.

And there's no explanation of how God created us. Did He use natural selection? Artificial selection? Some other means? You can rationally fit the big bang and the 14 billion year old universe and 4.5 billion year old earth into your worldview; evolution will be trickier, but you can manage.

One more thing. If you can accept God and the Bible on faith, why not accept the big bang, old universe and earth, and evolution on faith too?